Well, I'd hate to see it scrapped. The licence fee is incredibly good value for money. At little over £12 a month it pays for national and local BBC radio stations, BBC iPlayer and 4 television channels. BBC1 is acknowledged as a world leader in broadcasting standards, as is BBC2. BBC4 shows programmes that most commercial channels would back away from.Anita Bensoussane wrote: I'd like to see the licence fee scrapped altogether anyway. Numerous other channels manage to attract enough advertisers to keep going and I'm sure the BBC could too. It doesn't make sense to be forced to pay so much for a couple of channels that we barely even watch!
The alternative would be a commercially funded tv channel. That means adverts. No thank you!
You think £12 a month isn't good value, Anita? Compared to a Sky subscription it is a gift. That will set you back around £35 a month - and that doesn't include the so called premium sports and film channels. That's a whacking £420 a year - and that mainly includes channels showing little more than repeats or American programmes.
ITV (and the other commercial channels) are advert driven. For example, a 2hr drama on ITV only contains 90 minutes of programming - that's 30 minutes of watching adverts. Even a one-hour drama can be watched on catch-up in 44 minutes.
I'll vote for the licence fee, thank you!